"Mike Rice" wrote in message
...
[...]
If anyone's interested I made a ride from Lafayette Indiana to
Bloomington, Indiana and back last week. I found a road I felt I could
not ride in safety, Indiana state highway 46 from Sencer to
Bloomington had constant traffic, virtually no shoulders, and a slight
ledge along the white stripe on the side of the lane. I did several
extra miles of quite hilly terrain to avoid those fifteen miles.

Indiana Mike

The US is full of roads like you describe above and all cyclists should
avoid those kind of roads like the plague. I will go many miles out of my
way to do just that.

The Western part of the US is much worse than the Midwest in this respect.
You can normally find an alternative route consisting of back country roads
in the Midwest and you very often can't in the more sparsely settled West.
In a state like Wyoming you are often stuck on heavily trafficked roads with
not much shoulder whereas in a state like Minnesota or Iowa there are always
back roads you can take with little or no traffic. You must take these back
roads rather than major highways unless the highway has a good shoulder
where you will be relatively safe from getting run over.

--
Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota
aka
Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota